Missed the important digital marketing news and updates from last week? We’ve got you covered with the WDA Digital Marketing Round-Up.

Google

Google Gives Ads Report Editor A Visual Upgrade: Report Editor allows advertisers to visualise campaign performance without having to leave the Google Ads interface. Google has now given it a new look which looks more like Data Studio and enhances the user experience.

Shopping Deals to be Highlighted: Google is further helping e-commerce brands to boost product exposure and sales by highlighting the best Shopping promotions in Search results while also enabling shoppers to get the product they desire for the best price possible. These updates also apply to free shopping listings!

Social

Instagram Live Stream Time Limit Gets Extended: Live streaming continues to grow in popularity and Instagram has now made it possible for content creators to go live for four hours instead of just one hour, before the update. This enhanced flexibility to stream for longer may see more users going live on Instagram. Also, Instagram has made live streams easier to discover with a “Live Now” section added to IGTV.

YouTube Mobile Experience Improved: YouTube is improving its user experience on mobile devices with some new updates. The updates include:

  • A more streamlined player page with closed captions and autoplay toggle buttons moved to the top and other buttons rearranged.
  • New gestures including a swipe up to enter full screen and down to exit.
  • Bedtime reminders for digital wellbeing.
  • Suggested actions such as prompting the user to rotate their phone if the experience will be improved.
  • Better use of video chapters.

Pinterest Updates: Pinterest is set to launch new updates and features specifically designed to help merchants to generate more sales. The latest suite of merchant tools and updates includes:

  • Merchant storefront profile and discovery.
  • Product tagging.
  • Product catalogues.
  • Automatic bidding.
  • Conversion analytics.

LinkedIn’s Virtual Events More Discoverable: LinkedIn has made it easier for users to discover virtual events on the platform to boost attendance. The update will also enable event organisers to capture leads from those that sign up.

TikTok Partners With Shopify: TikTok makes another leap towards in-stream commerce with its new partnership with Shopify. Here’s what TikTok had to say…

“Today, we’re announcing a global partnership with Shopify that will help more than a million merchants create and run campaigns directly geared toward TikTok’s highly engaged community.”

Other

Microsoft Clarity Out of Beta: Microsoft Clarity is a free tool that enables site owners to better understand visitor behaviour with visual heatmaps, session playbacks and more – all with the main goal of improving the overall user experience. It was launched as a closed beta in 2018 and is now officially out of beta! Check it out here: https://clarity.microsoft.com/

Tripadvisor Updates to Help Hotels and Restaurants: The hospitality sector has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. As this makes for Tripadvisor’s main audience, they’ve been aiming to introduce more products, services and features to help restaurants and hotels to gain insights and boost visibility. The latest updates launched include:

  • Listings and menu syndication.
  • Predicting room demand with Spotlight and Reputation Pro.
  • Review aggregation and solicitation.

WDA’s Highlight of the Week

Our highlight for this week is the extension of Instagram’s Live Stream time limit.

With live streaming continuing to rise in popularity and users more “content hungry” than ever, it’s a necessary update for one of the biggest social platforms to compete better in the live streaming space. Whilst Twitch offers far more flexibility in live streaming, it’s still mostly considered a community for gamers. Before the update, once the hour mark was reached, the stream would cut out automatically and you’d lose the audience. The time extension stops this from happening, keeping viewers engaged on longer streams. We’d recommend businesses to start taking advantage of Instagram Live streams with Q&A sessions, live interviews and more.

A question we get asked regularly here at WDA is “How can we improve our digital presence? Should we advertise online? How effective is Facebook advertising?” Our answer is always “Absolutely!” We’ve had some great results from PPC and other online advertising but the most successful in terms of value for money, is Facebook Advertising. Initially, many businesses may assume that their ‘target audience’ aren’t on Facebook… but with 2 billion active users, we beg to differ.

What can you gain?

It’s not always about direct sales conversions. Sometimes it’s about brand recognition that will ultimately give your audience the confidence to buy or get in touch. A multi-faceted approach is key here, ensuring you’re active and visible in a variety of places is important. By this, we refer to the old marketing adage – The Rule of 7. A prospect must see your message an average of seven times before they’ll take action. For example, if a person has seen a billboard, heard a radio ad, flicked past a newspaper ad and spotted a LinkedIn post… they are still highly unlikely to act immediately and all of those variations of advertising can be very costly.

What we’ve found with facebook though, is that it truly offers the best value for money. It’s unrivalled for it’s ‘soft selling’ capabilities as a comfortable environment for people to take in information and explore options. Unlike print advertising, which can cost around £650 for a 1/2 page advert, you can set your own budget and target it toward your specific audience.

Let’s look at an example.

A client of WDA Automotive recently asked us to explore Facebook advertising as an option for them to promote their free 1-2-1 cycle training scheme. Cycle Derby are focussed upon getting people out and about, cycling together as families or as a way of commuting.

wda-blog-header-marketing

 

Now, there are 2 options when it comes to using Facebook to advertise. On the left is a Sponsored Post and on the right is an advert. Now with both kinds of advertising, you can choose your budget (from as little as £5) but with promoted posts, there is more capability for targeting. Whether it be by location, interests, age or even gender.

For Cycle Derby, one Facebook ad which cost around a third of the price of a print ad in a local magazine, they reached over 36,000 people in the local area and had 340 new visitors to their site in just 10 days!

When used as a part of an overarching campaign, advertising online can be particularly successful and even go viral! Just look at the likes of Hankook Tyres, Mercedes and the Citroen C4 Tranformer ad!

WDA Automotive Marketing | Facebook Advertising

If you’d like to find out how WDA Automotive can help you with your digital marketing and online presence, get in touch!

Growing consumerisation of technology means an increasing number of people have control of what technologies they use in both their personal and business lives. Two of the biggest areas where this trend manifests itself these days are mobile technologies and software, the latter of which has resulted in a steady and significant growth in the use of open source software (OSS) thanks to its lower cost and relatively similar functional capabilities.

Yet, despite such growth, OSS is still often derided as inferior in quality, security, and longevity in comparison to proprietary software when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Here are 4 concerns that still persist about OSS, and why they should officially be labeled myths:

Myth 1: Open source is less secure than proprietary software
In short, licensing models have nothing to do with security. If anything, OSS allows for development teams to rapidly address any security issues, whereas proprietary systems must rely on the software vendor to get around to issuing an update or patch.

Additionally, open source projects benefit greatly from having a diverse community that is interested in the development of the solution, not just one vendor. This allows for things like peer review from a base of knowledgeable and expert supporters. This really can’t be undervalued, because while these communities are invested in the quality of the software, they aren’t necessarily invested in making a dollar from every functional improvement.

In the end, if you asked a group of people to use the same processes to produce a proprietary model and OSS model of their software, they would likely be just as secure, and just as functional.

Myth 2: Open source is harder to maintain
Question: What do all these things have in common?: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous utterance “hasta la vista, baby”; Nirvana’s Nevermind album; The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Tim Berners-Lee’s “World Wide Web” (aka, the Internet); the original Linux open source kernel.

Answer: They all made their debut in 1991. And 22 years later, Linux is stronger than ever. Just last year, one of the world’s most popular gaming distribution platforms, Valve’s Steam – which at 54 million user accounts has an estimated 50–70% share of the digital distribution market for video games, made a version that works on Linux.

In many situations in fact, OSS can live on after the relationship with the original producer or vendor has ended, whether it’s because the vendor has shifted focus, went out of business, or priced itself out of the relationship – OSS remains valuable because it eschews all of these potential pitfalls.

Myth 3: There is less support for open source software
If we look at Linux as an example, some of the biggest companies in the world, for instance Google and Facebook, rely on Linux to run their servers, so they will always be concerned with maintaining software that basically runs the platform on which its business is built.

What’s more, with open source software, a business can always bring in an independent third party for support and consultation, rather than having to wait for the proprietary vendor to get around to addressing a particular issue they may have.

Myth 4: Open source is not enterprise-grade
I’m going to start my answer to this one with a list of organisations who use open source systems:

• Amazon
• Google
• IBM
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Reddit
• Wikipedia
• McDonalds
• London Stock Exchange
• New York Stock Exchange
• Audi
• BMW
• Peugeot
• Virgin America
• Dreamworks

That’s really just scratching the surface. Many of the world’s biggest organizations don’t just use open source software, but, in some cases, like Google’s Android, base an enormous portion of their entire business on it.

*Article originally published by Rafael Laguna on Wired.